Alderwood Community Church November 3, Becoming a 24/7 Worshiper Romans 12:1-2; Mark 12:28-30

Transcription

1 1 Alderwood Community Church November 3, 2013 Becoming a 24/7 Worshiper Romans 12:1-2; Mark 12:28-30 Intro: World Series Celebration a beautiful picture of Worship a celebration of God, who He is, what He says and what He has done. Sometimes God s revelation will cause us to drop to our knees, other times we will shout, sometimes we will want to be silent in his presence. We will be moved to praise him, thank him, confess our sins to him, pray for another, serve him or bear witness of his grace, mercy and love. Review last week: What and why of worship. Worship is the believer s response of all that they are mind, emotions, will, and body to all that God is and says and does. We are taught by Jesus in John 4 that we are to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. To worship in spirit, is to worship God with our spirits, our inner man. With our heart. To worship in truth, is to worship God according to the truth of his written word, and specifically, to worship him through Jesus Christ. Why is worship to be the priority of a believers life? Because of who God is. (His character and attributes: Holy, Powerful, faithful and loving) Because of what God has done. (He has created us, redeemed us and sustains us.) This morning I want us to look at the How of worship, specifically, how to become a 24/7 worshiper. *Read: Romans 11:33-12:2 Becoming a 24/7 Worshiper 1. Worship involves the presentation of my entire being to God. Notice it says in view of God s mercy, This Greek word translated mercy is sometimes translated compassion. The word here is plural, so in light of God s mercies, which Paul has enumerated in Chapters God has poured out his mercy, love and grace on us, and the only reasonable response, is to worship him. Notice it is God who takes the initiative. God always makes the first move. He creates us. He saves us. He forgives us. He blesses us. He protects us. Then because of all these things, we worship. And notice what we do - we offer our bodies, which our response to God s mercies. We worship Him. Paul is clear that the presentation of our bodies is our spiritual act of worship. No worship is pleasing to God which is purely inward, abstract and mystical; it must express itself in concrete acts of service performed by our bodies.

2 2 In verse 2 Paul issues the summons to the people of God not to be conformed to the prevailing culture, but rather to be transformed. Both verbs are present passive imperatives and denote the continuing attitudes which we are to retain. We must go on refusing to conform to the world s ways and go on letting ourselves be transformed according to God s will. J. B. Phillip s paraphrase catches the alternative: Don t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within. 2. Worship involves focusing my attention on God. Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:1 We need to look at, we need to pay attention to his revelation. Worship is focusing my mind, my thoughts, my attention on God. You know, in a lot of religions, the idea of worship is to put your mind into neutral, sort of lose your mind to the universe. But the truth is, God wants us to worship Him thoughtfully. It takes energy. It takes getting our mind focused on God. Not just going through the motions, but really, really thinking about it. Which isn t always easy to do. Have you ever prayed on autopilot? You know what I mean? You pray before a meal, you pray. Amen? And if somebody asked you what you just prayed, you d have no idea. You just prayed on autopilot. Do you ever zone out in church? That reminds us that it takes energy and attention to focus on God. One of the greatest expressions of love is often that attention. Sometimes guys will ask me, you know, my wife, my kids, they say I don t love them. But I do things for them. I work every day for them, why don t they feel loved by me? Because they want your attention. Attention is an incredible expression of love. Remember the first time you fell in love? You just couldn t get that person off your mind? You thought about them when you woke up in the morning. You thought about them all through recess. (My world s record going steady, 3 ½ hours!) You just thought about them all day long? That s an infatuation sometimes for us and it wears off. But God desires to be the focus our heart and minds. A. Things that distract us from focusing on God. (1) Busyness- they tyranny of the urgent, our hurried lives Chuck Swindoll in his book, Intimacy with the Almighty, he tells about a conversation he had with another pastor who was burned out. The pastor came up to Chuck and told him, Nobody around me knows this, but I am operating on fumes. I am lonely, hollow, shallow, enslaved to a schedule that never lets up. Upon reflection of this pastor s confession, and the out of control schedules of too many Christians, Chuck identifies the chief problem as being a lack of intimacy with God. We have many involvements, activities and programs, but not intimacy.

3 3 Swindoll goes on to say that we have become a body of people who look more like a herd of cattle in a stampede than a flock of God beside green pastures and still waters. We must learn anew to think deeply, to worship meaningfully, to meditate unhurriedly. Swindoll quotes Richard Foster who wrote, Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people. Swindoll goes on to recommend four spiritual disciplines that will help believers achieve intimacy with God almighty: Simplicity, Silence, Solitude and Surrender. (2) Selfishness and self-sufficiency We become too absorbed with ourselves and our agenda and our desires and we tune God out, or we become so self-sufficient and we try to figure everything out on our own. (3) Idols (Counterfeit gods) I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. Exodus 20:2-3 Tim Keller in his book, Counterfeit Gods, states, Each culture is dominated by its own set of idols. Each has its priesthoods, its totems and rituals. Each one has its shrines, whether office towers, spas and gyms, studios, or stadiums where sacrifices must be made in order to procure the blessing of the good life and ward off disaster. What are the gods of beauty, power, money and achievement, but these same things that have assumed mystic proportions in our individual lives and in our society? We may not physically kneel before the statue of Aphrodite, but many young women today are driven into depression and eating disorders by an obsessive concern over their body image. We may not actually burn incense to Artemis, but when money and career are raised to cosmic proportions, we perform a kind of child sacrifice, neglecting family and community to achieve a higher place in business and gain more wealth and prestige. It has been said that the human heart is an idol factory. In Ezekiel 14:3, God says about the elders in Israel, These men have set up idols in their hearts. God was saying that the human heart can take good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. An idol is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give you. A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living. An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, If I have that, then I ll feel my life has meaning, then I ll know I have value, then I ll feel significant and secure,. (4) Self-centered culture (world/age we live in) Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world. Romans 12:2

4 4 (5) Satan But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 2 Corinthians 11:3 B. Things that help us focus on God. (1) Daily time in God s Word (Meditation) (Psalm 119) View your quiet time, your devotions as an act of worship. It is impossible to honor God as we ought unless we know him as he is. And we could not know him as he is, without divine revelation of himself. (Stephen Charnock, p ) (2) Constant conversation with God Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6 Earth s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries, And daub their natural faces unaware. Elizabeth Barrett Browning 3. Worship involves expressing my affection to God. And for some of you, this is kind of difficult because you grew up in families that weren t real affectionate, weren t real expressive, didn t say I love you a lot. Maybe you re kind of the silent type. It s not real easy for you to express affection to God without feeling awkward. You re going to have to learn how to grow, how to develop, how to say I love you God. Do you remember the first time you ever said I love you to somebody? Probably scared to you death. You had sweaty palms, stomach was in a knot. You were all nervous are they going to accept it or are they going to reject it? God has taken away the risk. He said it first. God said, I love you. God has said it in a thousand ways. He created you. He s taken care of you. Even when you didn t know it, He was showing love to you. And God has said over and over and over to you, I love you. 1 John 4:19 We love Him, because He first loved us. You know, in many religions, their god is this angry tyrant, and you have to appease god and you have to avoid god and have you to kind of run from god, and you have to be afraid of god. But that s not the real god. The Bible says God wants to be loved. Have you ever said, I love you to God? God wants that from you. God wants you to know Him and love Him because you were made to be known and loved by God. You see, the most important thing you can know in life is that God loves you. And the most important thing you can do in life is to love Him back. So when you get up every morning

5 5 before you get out of bed, sit on the edge of your bed and say something like this, a little prayer. God, if I don t get anything else done today, at the end of this day, I want to know You a little bit better and I want to love You a little bit more. Because if you do that, at the end of your day, no matter how bad the day has gone, and no matter how many plans fell apart if at the end of the day, you know God a little bit better and you love Him a little bit more, that day was a success. So how can I express my affection to God? A. Tell Him: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God. Psalm 42:1-2 O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. Psalm 63:1-4 (1) Say it out loud, I love You and Thank You Start looking around at everything and start thanking God. Everything you look at is here because of God. Everything you look at is a gift from God. So you just start by being thankful. *Worship is turning the common into the sacred. *Worship turns everyday experiences into expressions of praise, honor or gratitude. (2) Sing to Him B. Show Him: (1) Create art, build buildings (2) Surrender yourself to God. (3) Obey His Word. If you love me, you will obey what I command. John 14:15 (4) Love other people Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Mark 12:30 4. Worship involves using all of my abilities, experiences, and resources to serve God.

6 6 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Colossians 3:23-24 Now, if you get this verse, it will absolutely revolutionize your life. You ll never be the same once you understand this verse. Notice it says, Whatever you do that means anything work at it with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord and not for people. You see, you don t have to join a monastery to worship more. Some of you will go home from this thing saying, if my No. 1 purpose is to get to know and love God, then I should have a quiet time with God, five hours a day. No, you don t need to do that. Well, then I should come to church every day of the week. No, you don t need to do that either. It is not about that. You just change who you re working for. A. And when you change who you re working for, your work becomes worship. You see, many of you compartmentalize your life saying, Okay, here s my worship. I go to church once a week. Maybe I go to a small group once a week, and maybe I have a daily time where I m reading a little bit every day about God and trying to learn from Him, and that s my worship. And then over here, I ve got my career and then over here I ve got my social life. No, no. God says I want you to invite me into every area of your life. I want to be involved in all of it, invite me into the whole thing. I want you to get this one truth, because it will revolutionize your life. In life it s not what you do that matters; it is Who you do it for. You give it all to God. And all of your work can be turned to worship. You can do it for God. You say, I m going to do this as if I m doing it for you, God. Now, you may be a carpet cleaner, you may be an attorney, you may be a nurse, you may be an at-home mother raising children, you may be an executive or a manager or sales person, or a truck driver or a nurse. It really doesn t matter what you do. It s Who you do it for. God wants to know, Are you doing it for Me?, whatever you re doing. And so if you re good at repairing things, you go out and say, God, I want to repair things this week as if I m doing it for you. And if you re good at cooking, God, I m going to cook this meal, whether it s for my family or for a restaurant, as if I m doing it for You. And if you re good at filing and organizing, God, I m going to file these things away as if I m doing it for You. And that turns work into worship, and then you re worshipping God all your waking hours each and every day. Not just in church. God doesn t want worship to just be a church thing. He wants it to be your whole life, to worship God with your life. Romans 12:1 (MSG) Take your everyday, ordinary life your sleeping, your eating, your going to work, your walking-around life and place it before God as an offering. There s that word again. Offer is the essence of worship. I m offering my life to you. Now, folks, this is where the rubber meets the road. You can clean your garage to the glory of God and some of you ought to! Everything can be turned into an act of worship. Notice, Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, putting your heart and soul in, as though you were working for the Lord. Now, what if you decided today, you said, God, tomorrow morning, I m going to get up and

7 7 I m going to go back to work and it is the same old work I ve been at for 10 years or 20 years or whatever, but this time I m going back with a new boss. I m going to do it for you. That will turn mundane, trivial things that don t seem to mean a whole lot into worship. And honestly, that s the kind of worship God loves. He s into this kind of worship that says God, whatever I m doing, I m going to do it for You. And when you do that, then your life becomes an act of worship. You see, real worship is a lifestyle. *Worship is turning the common into the sacred. *Worship turns everyday experiences into expressions of praise, honor or gratitude. B. Your school work, your study becomes an act of worship, when you do it for Christ, and seek to honor him, and give your very best efforts to study. C. Sports become a player for Christ, by doing your sport for him and doing your very best, and by representing Jesus Christ on the field. Be fierce, be competitive, play to win, but have a Christ-like manner. Those are not mutually exclusive. D. Dating make it a worship experience E. Marriage and your family F. Your finances how you use 100% of your money and certainly the giving of your tithes and offerings. G. Your vacations H. Your Mission sharing the Gospel of Christ is an act of worship. The truth is everybody worships something. You were wired to worship by God. He put it in your DNA. You couldn t stop worshipping if you had to, because it is part of being a human. Everybody worships something. That s why you can go to any culture in the world and find people worshipping. If you don t worship God, believe me, you re going to find a substitute real quick, even if it is just yourself. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 1 Cor. 10:31 Let me ask you, what are you worshipping? I ll tell you what it is. It is whatever you re giving your primary attention to, whatever you re giving your primary affection to, and whatever you re giving your primary abilities to. Now, in that case, some of you worship your career. You worship your career, and you re living for that job. Some of you are worshipping making money and you re worshipping retirement. Some of you are worshipping pleasure, some of you are worshipping sex. Some of you are worshipping another person who so dominates your life -- your total attention, affection and ability goes to that person. The greatest temptation of your life and the worst sin you could possibly commit is the temptation to worship something other than God. You say, That s not my problem. Oh, yeah it is. It s my problem, too. It s the number one problem in life, because it is the root behind every other one of your problems. Whenever you love something more than God, you re going to have chaos, conflict, stress and problems in your life. Always. When I love comfort more than doing the right thing, I always get into trouble. When I love protecting my ego more than God and humility, I m going to go down the wrong path. When I love my reputation, when I love money, when I love pleasure, when I love anything more than God, it creates all kinds of havoc in my life.

8 8 Conclusion: 1. Worship involves the presentation of my entire being to God. 2. Worship involves focusing my attention on God. 3. Worship involves expressing my affection to God. 4. Worship involves using all of my abilities, experiences and resources to serve God. Take Away: What are you going to do about it? Preparation to partake of the Lord s Table: Let s take the next few moments and worship the Lord by focusing on what he did on the cross on our behalf. Think about his sacrifice on your behalf. Think about the fact that your sins, not just part of them, but all of them were nailed to the cross, and you bear them no more. Give God praise. Declare your love to him in the quietness of your heart and then in a few minutes as we declare together our love and allegiance to him.